Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz. Elisheva Baumgarten

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      Figure 7. A family eating together. © Bibliothèque nationale de France. Ms héb. Paris, 1333, fol. 20b. Haggadah, fifteenth century.

      Another group of scholars that has addressed medieval fasting, including Yaacov Gartner, Daniel Sperber, Meir Rafeld, and Ephraim Kanarfogel, analyze halakhic discussions of fasting from medieval Ashkenaz.²⁴¹ Their work is largely devoted to halakhic details and the prominence of frequent fasting among pious rabbinic leaders. Like Elizur, these authors attribute medieval Ashkenazic fasting practices to traditions from late antique Palestine. They each attend to internal Jewish routes of intellectual transmission without touching on the cultural milieu that enveloped medieval Jewish life. Grossman and Har-Shefi, along with Elizur, highlight rituals from late antique Palestine that resurfaced in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Ashkenaz.²⁴² Similarly, many scholars of Hasidei Ashkenaz have turned to late antique Palestinian traditions to explain the centrality of fasting within Sefer Hasidim and Sefer Rokeah.²⁴³

      Admittedly, there are significant distinctions between Jewish and Christian understandings of penance. It is possible to point to four readily apparent differences. First, Eucharistic theology with penance as a concomitant requirement for participation in Mass lacks any equivalent in Judaism. A second difference concerns to celibacy, which had a role in some forms of penitent behavior among Christians and was an inherent feature of mendicant and cloistered life; however, celibacy had almost no place in the medieval Judaism of northern Europe.²⁴⁴ Confession is the third contrasting element. In Christian culture, confession has a clear juridical parallel and, as some scholars have shown, ideas of penance are often equated or infused with concepts of legal judgment and medical processes,²⁴⁵ so much so that developments in penitential theology have been explained by innovations in legal thought.²⁴⁶ Such similarities are less prevalent in Jewish writings due to the status of Jews and Jewish communities in medieval Europe. A final distinction between the two societies relates to models of approbation and emulation within medieval life. Judaism lacked the categories of saints and celibates who were known for their penance and were so esteemed within medieval Christian culture.

      Despite these significant distinctions, I would argue that a comparison is possible nevertheless. While the contrast between extreme forms of Christian asceticism and medieval Jewish fasting practices was great, as I have demonstrated, routine and even frequent fasting belongs to the broader category of repentant practice without being inextricably tied to Eucharistic piety that characterized ascetic fasting and was separate from Jewish culture. That aspect of Christian piety did not impede the development of Jewish fasting practices within medieval Christian society at large.²⁴⁷

      As outlined in the introduction, I suggest approaching this as a bricolage rather than trying to determine whether fasting practices were “Jewish” or “Christian” per se. Fasting as a religious practice of self-denial has been in wide circulation throughout history. Jews and Christians shared the notion that those who practiced severe self-denial deserved admiration. Jews did not need to accept celibacy, Eucharistic piety, or penitential theology to share this perspective. Medieval Jewish texts define a number of exemplary men and even a few women as pious (hasidim), ascetic (perushim), or righteous (tzaddikim) on the basis of their fasting practices. For instance, Isaac of Dampierre was referred to as a hasid, as were other rabbis who fasted regularly.²⁴⁸ Women and men who fasted during the High Holiday period were called hasidim and tzaddikim as well.²⁴⁹